Category: iOS 5.x

Brushed under the carpet or blown out of proportion by the sensational mainstream media? However you think the coverage of the Flashback trojan played out the fact is that Apple handled the whole thing badly. But in typical Apple fashion seems to have scraped through unharmed, I suspect in future they won’t be so lucky.

It all played out much the same way that any major exploit does. For Microsoft if an exploit grabs hold and spreads to tens of millions of Windows computers then it is big news, even if that proportion of install base is relatively quite low. For Apple, who’s reputation of invisible Macs prevails, the story is much the same. The Flashback trojan was said to have spread to over 600,000 Macs worldwide-which is estimated to be about one percent of the install base.

Apple today announced a new iPad finally putting an end to the chorus of iPad 3 rumours that have been circulating for many months. The new iPad, which is simply named iPad, is very much in line with the rumours. Also announced today, in line with expectation, was a new Apple TV.

Apple’s new Apple TV offers 1080p output and a new user interface which very much looks like Apple is positioning the device for more apps in the near future. Apple TV users can choose from over 15,000 movies and over 90,000 TV episodes on the iTunes Store, now available in 1080p. Apple TV also continues to offer content from Netflix’s streaming catalogue, live sports from MLB, NBA and NHL as well as Internet content from Vimeo, YouTube and Flickr.

Ahead of the iPhone 4S release on October 14 Apple will release iOS 5 to the public. On the same day, October 12, Apple will unleash iCloud to users of iOS 5 and OS X Lion.

“iCloud is the easiest way to manage your content, because iCloud does it all for you and goes far beyond anything available today,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “You don’t have to think about syncing your devices, because it happens automatically, and it is free.”

iCloud services include iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, that work seamlessly with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.

iOS 5 which was previewed in detail back in June at its unveiling has today been released as a golden master to registered iOS developers. iOS 5 includes over 200 new features including Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption; iMessage™, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS 5 users; and Newsstand, a new way to purchase and organize your newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

iCloud will be available on October 12 as a free download to iPhone, iPad or iPod touch users running iOS 5 or a Mac running OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, TV shows, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available starting in the US later this month for $24.99 a year. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars. Additional iCloud storage upgrades are available to purchase starting at $20 a year for 10GB, $40 a year for 20GB and $100 a year for 50GB.

iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad and iPod touch (third and fourth generation) customers, allowing them to experience the amazing new features.

Despite Apple’s own use of iPhone in the event invite I view the term ‘iPhone event” with hesitation, I firmly believe that today’s event being held at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino at 10am Pacific (6pm London) is an iOS device event not just focused on the iPhone.

Much of what I wrote last week on the iPhone rumour cycle and where we’re at remains largely true. Except many onlookers and commentators have placed themselves firmly into one of two camps, the first camp believing that Apple won’t release a device called the iPhone 5 but will instead release a new phone called the iPhone 4s and alongside it an 8GB iPhone 4. The second camp against all odds still believes we’ll see an iPhone 5, some even believe with a complete redesign, and that the iPhone 4s is the new low-end iPhone.

Whatever happens today we know one thing for sure, Apple has kept this rumour cycle the most locked down of them all, or at very least they’ve distracted us enough with iPhone 5 rumours that we’re missing the picture.

I personally remain firmly in the camp of thought that we’ll see an iPhone 4s (N94) today powered by Apple’s A5 system-on-a-chip (SoC), 1GB of RAM, featuring an 8MP camera and available in 16, 32, and 64GB capacities. There are strong rumours that Apple has incorporated a chip capable of GSM and CDMA in the iPhone 4s and that this phone will be capable of HSPA+ on GSM networks. HSPA+ is capable of very fast data speeds with most carriers supporting up to 21Mbps and is often classed as “4G” by those carriers, it’s not.

The iPhone 4s will take the shape of the current iPhone 4 but will be thinner and the antenna design adjusted, presumably to accommodate both CDMA and GSM capabilities.

The iPhone 4s is expected in Apple’s major markets on October 14 but some have suggested a very unlikely imminent release.

Alongside the iPhone 4s Apple will have an 8GB iPhone 4 (N90A for us geeks), it’s by no means a focus of the show, but it aims to hit the low-end market and help penetration in African and Asian markets. Some have speculated that this device has been reworked to make it even cheaper, if this is the case then the changes are very minimal.

Such an iPhone lineup leads to a problem though, every man and his dog is expecting an iPhone 5 and Apple doesn’t appear to have made its usual attempts to dampen expectation ahead of the event. So what else does Apple have up its sleeve?

It’s all in the software and this is where Apple shines. When Apple released the iPhone 3GS (notice a pattern?) in 2009 it was a slight upgrade from the 3G released the previous year. The ‘s’ was said to stand for speed, sure it was faster but it lacked that wow factor. One of Apple’s marquee features for the iPhone 3GS was voice recognition.

Apple looks set to make this the marquee feature of the iPhone 4s and this time do it properly. Everyone knows how voice recognition works on a phone, you say call a contact and it calls someone else. This will all change.

The feature which is currently only scantily visible in betas of iOS 5 is said to be called ‘Assistant’ and be a system wide feature. An icon found in a beta of iOS 5 suggests a microphone button will sit in the bottom left of the keyboard which will enable dictation, but obviously the key point is the tightly integrated way in which information is presented upon making a query.

With Apple expected to unveil this feature at the event later today we should expect another iOS 5 beta for developers, whether this comes in the form of a Golden Master (GM) or not it doesn’t really matter.

iOS 5 will land before the iPhone 4S, possibly as soon as this Friday (October 7).

As I said earlier though this isn’t just an iPhone event, Apple’s current lineup of iPods have been on the market longer than any others as the month of September sailed past with not a hint of an iPod refresh. Much has been speculated about the future of the iPod, some by myself, and I suspect most of it’s wrong.

The iPod touch will naturally take centre stage and will take the form of previous updates with the upper models seeing an upgrade to the A5, extended battery life, they’re unlikely to get much thinner but will be available in white.

As for the other iPods, the rumours are scarce. Some have suggested the iPod classic and shuffle will go the way of the dodo, this may be true for the shuffle but only if the nano comes down in price. The classic, despite my own predictions a year ago, looks set to remain unchanged.

Apple does have one more big feature and that is of course, iCloud. Whilst unveiled at WWDC in June expect Apple to go over the details again, nothing is expected to have changed but we’ll get a date when the service goes live which could be within hours of the event.

Let’s summarise:

iPhone 4s available in 16, 32 and 64GB capacities. A5 chip, 1GB RAM, 8MP rear camera, looks like the current iPhone 4 but thinner and with a redesigned antenna. Both GSM and CDMA capable with HSPA+. Available October 14.

8GB iPhone 4 to fill the gap of the low-end market. Largely unchanged.

iPod touch available in white and with the A5 chip, design unchanged, same goes for capacities.

iPod classic to remain the same, shuffle phased out and nano lowered in price.

iOS 5 key feature to be voice Assistant, we’ll see a GM this week and maybe public release on October 7.

iCloud available imminently.

Coverage

Apple’s event is being held in front of a select number of members of the media at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino. A simulcast is being held at the Covent Garden Apple Store in London for UK and Europe based media. The event will begin at the following times:

World of Apple will provide coverage of the news and post-event analysis. Apple is not providing a live video but a meta blog of events can be followed on World of Apple’s Twitter feed or the following sites:

Apple yesterday released the fourth beta of iOS 5 for registered developers and for the first time has enabled over-the-air (OTA) updates. The update which can be delivered via a cellular or WiFi network is also a delta update, weighing in at 133MB for a GSM iPhone 4.

Whilst developers can continue to download full-size images from the iOS developer site, the enabling of OTA updates represents Apple’s first foray into delta updates. A number of reports suggest that the delta update whilst tiny compared to full updates requires just under 900MB of free space to unpack and install and iPhones require a power source or over 50% battery life.

Features of the fourth beta of iOS 5 appear slim as Apple begins to shape and refine the mobile OS update expected to be released in mid-September.

Last night Apple released the third beta of iOS 5 to registered developers. Accompanying the beta of iOS 5 was a new iTunes 10.5 and Apple TV software beta.

The third beta of iOS 5 brings the software to build 9A5259f and according to a number of sites brings a flurry of changes and improvements.

It’s All Tech has posted an extensive look at iOS 5 beta 3 including the new location services controls, voice roaming, new Safari preferences, new Reminders app icon and mailbox creation in Mail amongst many other changes.

With this beta Apple has also brought a new feature into iOS on the iPad known as Assistive Touch which allows those who could have trouble using multi-point gestures to use an iPad. Assistive Touch also gives access to hardware features such as locking the screen, adjusting volume and shaking the device. Enabled in Settings, Assistive Touch is activated by tapping an icon in the corner of the screen. MacStories offers a detailed overview of the new accessibility gestures.

iOS 5 is widely expected to be released in mid-September alongside the iPhone 5. iOS 5 packs over 200 new features and will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (fourth generation) and iPod touch (third generation).

Following today’s WWDC keynote where Apple discussed Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud the company has now released a slew of updates for registered developers. Apple has released the first beta of iOS 5, as well as iTunes 10.5. The fourth preview of Mac OS X Lion is also available. Registered developers can also enable iCloud for testing with their own apps.

Apple has also released Xcode 4.2 developer preview.

The first build of iOS 5 is available for iPhone 4 (GSM and CDMA), iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation) and is labelled build 9A5220p. The beta of iOS is also accompanied by an update to iTunes which brings the extensive media software to version 10.5. iTunes 10.5 brings some minor graphical interface changes and of course adds support for iCloud, in this case Automatic Downloads of Music, Books and and Apps.

The features available in iOS 5 are covered in detail by World of Apple’s keynote coverage, over the coming days we’ll be offering a more detailed look at Apple’s brand new version of iOS.

Mac OS X Lion DP 4 is labelled build 11A480b and is available for registered Mac developers from the Developer Center. Apple today demoed many of the features we’ve already seen in Mac OS X Lion. With the release of the fourth developer preview iCloud will be the biggest changes. World of Apple will be looking in more detail at what has changed in developer preview 4 soon.

The big one for developers today is early access to iCloud. Such access will give developers time to build the services available into their apps. Apple has posted a detailed iCloud page just for developers which tells them what they need and how they get started with iCloud. Notably Apple has posted a beta of iPhoto which has Photo Stream built-in.

Finally Apple has released a beta of Safari 5.1 which includes a number of new APIs for developers, those that initially stick out are, “support for full-screen web content”, Extension Popovers API, and Extension Menus that can show a list of options from within the Safari UI.

During today’s WWDC keynote Steve Jobs announced iCloud, a brand new service from Apple. iCloud is a set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices.

“Today it is a real hassle and very frustrating to keep all your information and content up-to-date across all your devices,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices. All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it—it all just works.”

The formerly $99/year MobileMe services are now free. Contacts, Calendar and Mail—all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.

The App Store and iBookstore now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device at no additional cost.

Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn’t count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.

iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage.

Apple also announced Photo Stream which automatically ploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.

Cloud will be available this fall concurrent with iOS 5. Users can sign up for iCloud for free on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5 or a Mac running Mac OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit.

Apple has today announced a brand new version of iOS for iPhones, iPads and iPod tocuhes. iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (fourth generation) and iPod touch (third generation) this fall. The iOS 5 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members.

New iOS 5 features include: Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption; iMessage, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS devices; and Newsstand, a new way to purchase and organise your newspaper and magazine subscriptions. With the new PC Free feature, iOS 5 users can activate and set up their iOS device right out of the box and get software updates over the air with no computer required.

“iOS 5 has some great new features, such as Notification Center, iMessage and Newsstand and we can’t wait to see what our developers do with its 1,500 new APIs,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Perhaps iOS 5’s paramount feature is that it’s built to seamlessly work with iCloud in the Post PC revolution that Apple is leading.”

With iOS 5 and iCloud, you just enter your Apple ID and password and iCloud will seamlessly integrate with your apps to automatically and wirelessly keep all of your mail, contacts, calendars, photos, apps, books, music and more, up-to-date across all your devices without ever having to connect to a computer.

Notification Center provides iOS 5 users with an innovative way to easily access all notifications―text messages, missed calls, calendar alerts, app alerts and more, all in one place, from anywhere in iOS 5. When they arrive, notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen without interrupting what you’re doing. With one swipe you can see all your notifications, and a simple tap will take you right to its app for more detail. Notifications also appear on the lock screen, with the ability to be taken to the notifying app with just one swipe.

iOS 5 Notification Center | Image courtesy of Apple

Newsstand is a beautiful, easy-to-organise bookshelf displaying the covers of all your newspaper and magazine subscriptions in one place. A new section of the App Store features just subscription titles, and allows users to quickly find the most popular newspapers and magazines in the world. If subscribed to, new issues appear in the Newsstand and are updated automatically in the background so you always have the latest issue and the most recent cover art.

Safari is the world’s most popular mobile browser, and with iOS 5 it’s now even better. New features include Safari Reader, which gets all the clutter out of the way and sets the right font size on a web page, so you can easily scroll and read through a story; Reading List, so you can save articles to read later and they automatically show up on all your iOS devices; and Tabbed Browsing, which makes it easy to flip between multiple web pages on iPad.

iOS 5 includes built-in Twitter integration, so you can sign in once and then tweet directly from all your Twitter-enabled apps, including Photos, Camera, Safari, YouTube and Maps with a single tap. New APIs give third party developers the ability to take advantage of the single sign-on capability for their own iOS 5 apps.

iMessage in iOS 5 brings the functionality of iPhone messaging to all of your iOS devices―iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Built right into the Messages app, iMessage allows you to easily send text messages, photos, videos or contact information to a person or a group on other iOS 5 devices over Wi-Fi or 3G. iMessages are automatically pushed to all your iOS 5 devices, making it easy to maintain one conversation across your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. iMessage also features delivery and read receipts, typing indication and secure end-to-end encryption.

iOS 5 running iMessage | Image courtesy of Apple

The new Reminders app helps you manage your tasks; create and group related tasks together; and set time or location-based reminder alerts, priorities and due dates, so you can be reminded of a task as its deadline approaches, or when you arrive or depart a given location. Reminders can also be viewed in iCal and Outlook and are updated automatically.

New features in the Camera and Photos apps give you instant access to the camera right from the lock screen, and you can use the volume-up button to quickly snap a photo. Optional grid lines help line up your shot and a simple tap locks focus and exposure on one subject. The new Photos app lets you crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye, and organise your photos into albums right on your device to share them on the go.

With the new PC Free feature, iOS 5 users can activate and set up their iOS device right out of the box with no computer required, and iOS software updates are delivered over the air and installed with just a tap. Wi-Fi Sync in iOS 5 transfers and backs up your content securely over SSL and wirelessly syncs purchased content from your device to your iTunes library.